The “Internet of Things” (IoT) is designed to support inter-networking of physical devices such as appliances, vehicles, buildings, and other items that are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity to enable the devices to collect and exchange data over the Internet. The IoT ecosystem involves a diverse user base that spans numerous vertical markets including industrial applications, smart homes, telematics, wearables, automotive fleet management, smart traffic applications, provision of real-time traffic information, security monitoring and reporting, utilities, vending machines, healthcare metering and alerting, and the like. A large (and rapidly growing) number of IoT devices support cellular access, e.g., access according to standards defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Current estimates predict there will be 20-100 billion IoT devices in operation by 2020. Approximately 20% of IoT devices are expected to support cellular technology by 2020, which corresponds to an estimated 4 to 10 billion cellular-enabled IoT devices.
Application servers in the IoT ecosystem provide information or instructions to devices in the IoT ecosystem by transmitting queries. Queries are used to initiate actions such as data collection by the devices, to request transmission of the collected data from the devices to the application server, to provide data such as software upgrades to the devices, to notify devices of upcoming broadcast transmissions from the application server, and the like. Most of the queries are non-time critical queries having relatively small numbers of bytes that are transmitted to the IoT devices, e.g., a request to turn on the air conditioning in a connected car. Short message service (SMS) messages provide a straightforward way to exchange small amounts of data between application servers and IoT devices. The SMS messages are used to trigger actions at the IoT device such as shutdown, rebooting, reconfiguration of a reporting time interval, and the like. The SMS messages are also able to instruct IoT devices to establish a connection (such as a packet data network, PDN, connection) that is subsequently used for delivery of other types of data such as software upgrade packages.